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Verizon sold their (2g/3g, dunno about the 4g stuff) frequencies in half the state (the northern/northeastern half) to US Cellular. Those were B-side (or A-side, i forget which, it's the one originally handed out to incumbent wireline LECs) allocations in the 800 MHz blocks back in the 80s. Bell Atlantic had them, but didn't keep them -- there, or in the western panhandle of Maryland either (and in MD they are wireline ILEC for the entire state, no exceptions). So it's not that they were outbid; they unloaded them deliberately. They wanted the cash to serve a more lucrative market. They kept all the Pennsyltucky ones though; I guess Bell of PA was a better funded division than C&P back then.

That half of the state is pretty much served only by US Cellular and AT&T, with a smattering of nTelos/Sprint near major highways. And that's before you get to the radio quiet zone near the VA border. Ain't nobody got time to keep hundreds of cell towers from interfering in any way whatsoever with the radio telescopes in Green Bank, or the ECHELON spy station in Sugar Grove. (So actually, you sort of *can* blame bad wireless service in a few counties directly on the NSA here.)

zarloq2 (1160039) writes "Craig Murray's site, along with several other UK-based political blogs have been shut down in response Usmanov's lawyers putting pressure on his webhost.

Here's an excerpt from the sports.aol.com blog:
Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, is badmouthing Alisher Usmanov, the billionaire Russian steel magnate attempting to take over Premier League club Arsenal (UK football club), because he wants to sell you a book he wrote about his experience in that former Soviet republic. It has become clear today, however, that whatever Murray is attempting to sell, Usmanov and his lawyers do not want anyone to buy it.
According to Tom Dunmore at PitchInvasion.net, Craig Murray's web site was taken off line today after sustained pressure on Murray's web hosting provider from Schillings, the London law firm representing Usmanov. What's more, Schillings has also managed to put the kibosh on political site Bloggerheads three days after Tim Ireland wrote this piece on Schillings' cease & desist letters."Link to Original Source

daninbusiness writes "Across the US, beekeepers are finding that their bees are disappearing — not returning while searching for nectar and pollen. This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as 14 billion dollars' worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination.
Reasons for this problem, dubbed "colony collapse disorder" are still unknown. Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides.
TFA is in the New York Times (login may be required)."

uniquebydegrees writes "InfoWorld is reporting about a new controversy swirling around a planned presentation at Black Hat Federal in Washington D.C. this week. Security researcher Chris Paget of IOActive will demo an RFID hacking tool that can crack HID brand door access cards. HID Corp., which makes the cards, is miffed and is accusing IOActive of patent infringement over the presentation, recalling the legal wrangling over Michael Lynn's presentation of a Cisco IOS hole at Black Hat in 2005. Black Hat's Jeff Moss says they're standing by their speaker. A news conference is scheduled for tomorrow AM. Read it here: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/26/HNblackh atrfid_1.html"

Mike Michelson writes "Or at least, the ones a bunch of gamers got together and dreamed up screenshots for. This article really begs the question of just what developers will be getting out of our consoles three years from now. And whether these games are hopeless wishful thinking or not, it sure is fun to think about."

An anonymous reader writes "Suppose a commenter posts a libelous comment here at Slashdot. Can Slashdot and its owners be sued for defamation? A federal appeals court just held that no, they cannot. The court noted that a federal law was designed to ensure that 'within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,' adding that, were the law otherwise, it would have an 'obvious chilling effect' on blogger speech."

robotninja writes "Everyone's favourite professor, Michael Geist, provides a great overview of Open Access in this article, published today in the Toronto Star. In it, he briefly outlines how the Eurpoean Union is leapfrogging both the US and Canada in Open Access policies. From the article:

"the European Commission committed over $100 million toward facilitating greater open access" whereas "Neither the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, nor the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, which together have an annual budget of more than $1 billion, are anywhere near incorporating open access requirements into their funding policies"; and that although "last year the Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced in the U.S. Congress", the bill has yet to become law.

For a movement toward openness that started in large part among North American scholars, are the U.S. and Canada dropping the ball on Open Access?"

friedo writes "Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski has expunged the criminal record of Perl author and guru Randal "merlyn" Schwartz. Schwartz was fired from his job and convicted of three felonies after cracking some passwords while working for Intel."

zhenya00 (972438) writes "USAToday is reporting on a story most of us are already familiar with; the case of Julie Amero, a 40 year old Norwich, Connecticut substitute teacher who has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor when the un-patched Windows 98 computer she had used to check her email began to display a flurry of pornographic pop-ups to the students in her classroom. She faces up to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced this Friday March 2.
From the article:

"Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it."

Can this country really allow something like this to happen? Why isn't there general outrage on the front page of every newspaper? Why aren't those responsible being flooded with calls and emails from angry citizens?"

Brian Tanner was sitting in his Acura Integra recently outside the Palmer Library playing online games when a Palmer police pulled up behind him. The officer asked him what he was doing. Tanner, 21, was using the library's wireless Internet connection. He was told that his activity constituted theft of services and was told to leave. The next day, Sunday, police spotted him there again.